United Kingdom

LONDON, Sept 18 (Reuters) - New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the best advice the late Queen Elizabeth gave her on becoming a leader and a mother was "you just get on with it".

Ardern, in London for the queen's funeral on Monday, became the first woman in the country’s history to give birth while in office when she had her daughter in 2018, and was pregnant when she first met the queen.

Ardern, 42, is one of the few elected leaders to hold office while pregnant. Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto gave birth while she was prime minister in 1990.

LONDON (AP) — In retrospect, it seems as if she was preparing us all along.

Whether it was due to age, ill health or a sense that the end was near, Queen Elizabeth II spent much of the last two years tying up loose ends, trying to make sure the family firm would keep ticking along after her death.

LONDON (AP) — Thousands of police, hundreds of British troops and an army of officials made final preparations Sunday for the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II — a spectacular display of national mourning that will also be the biggest gathering of world leaders for years.

U.S. President Joe Biden and other world leaders have flown into London for the funeral, to which around 500 royals, heads of state and heads of government from around the globe have been invited.

LONDON (AP) — Thousands of people spent London’s coldest night in months huddled in line to view the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, and authorities warned Saturday that arriving mourners face a 16-hour wait.

A tide of people wanting to say goodbye streamed into Parliament’s Westminster Hall, where the queen’s coffin is lying in state, draped in her Royal Standard and capped with a diamond-studded crown. The numbers have grown steadily since the public was first admitted on Wednesday, with a queue that snakes around Southwark Park and stretches out at least 5 miles (8 kilometers).

London, Sep 17 (PTI) King Charles III has pledged to uphold the “additional duty” as a new monarch of protecting the diversity of the UK and be a sovereign of all communities around the country and the Commonwealth.

LONDON, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Russian-backed separatists in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson said Ukrainian forces had bombarded government buildings on Friday, killing at least one person and wounding others.

Kirill Stremousov, the Russian-installed deputy head of the Kherson region, told Russian state TV that one wing of the administration's building in Kherson had been practically destroyed in the strike, which he said involved U.S.-made HIMARS rockets.

LONDON, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Despite legal action from the European Union (EU), the United Kingdom (UK) said on Thursday that it will continue with its pause on border checks on goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

"I can confirm we have received a reply from the UK. We will now analyze the reply before deciding on the next steps," European Commission spokesperson for EU-UK affairs Daniel Ferrie said on Thursday.

LONDON (AP) — The flood of grief from the death of Queen Elizabeth II forced the British government to call a temporarily halt to people joining a miles-long line to file past her coffin as it lay in state Friday, hours before King Charles III and his siblings were to stand vigil in the historic Westminster Hall.

A live tracker of the queue said it was “at capacity” and entry was being “paused” for six hours as waiting times reached 14 hours and the line stretched 5 miles (8km) from Parliament to Southwark Park in south London and then around the park.

LONDON, Sept 15 (Reuters) - Russia's lower house of parliament will consider summoning Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu to face questioning in a closed session, senior lawmaker Sergei Mironov was cited as saying by Kommersant newspaper on Thursday.

It is virtually unknown for the State Duma to summon a defence minister to account for himself. However, Russia's armed forces have been openly criticised by military commentators this week after losing control of large parts of Ukraine's Kharkiv region to a lightning advance by Ukrainian forces. 

LONDON (AP) — Thousands of mourners waited for hours Thursday in a line that stretched for nearly 4 1/2 miles (7 kilometers) across London for the chance to spend a few minutes filing past Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin while she lays in state at Britain’s Parliament. King Charles III spent the day in private to reflect on his first week on the throne.